Diaglamming Sentences

Almost as soon as the State of the Union address ended, there were a number of data mash-ups of the words in his oration. With tag cloud software that shows the relative frequency of a given word, one can peruse Obama's address to Congress or Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's Republican response.

Other kinds of visualizations have also become popular like NPR's Obama Tracker, which also produced an inauguration widget.

MSNBC offers an interesting video interface that works with the transcript of the speech to encourage viewers to clip and embed particular sections from the speech into other Web 2.0 applications.

A Word to the Wise

Dennis Jerz points out that two men from the Typo Eradication Advancement League have been banned from national parks for making corrections in permanent marker to a hand-painted historical sign. In the era of Microsoft Word the notion of line-editing by making physical corrections to material text may seem anachronistic, but on a cached copy of their website they explain their rationale as follows:

This March through May, we, sworn members of TEAL, will be taking a road trip around the country to stamp out as many typos as we can find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. We do not blame, nor chastise, the authors of these typos. It is natural for mistakes to occur; everybody will slip now and again. But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling, and the time has come for the crisis to be addressed. We believe that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.

According to "Typo 'vigilantes' get probation for vandalism" in the Chicago Sun-Times, the two miscreants received light sentences.

(However, Jerz also points out Jonathan Beecher Field's argument in "Why Doesn't Plagiarism Matter?" that scrupulousness about the integrity of the written word seems to be waning, if the support of recent vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is any measure of the Zeitgeist.)

Virtualpolitik pal Eames Demetrios will need to remember to be careful about his mechanics, grammar, spelling, and usage in the markers that he is leaving to commemorate events in the alternate reality he has created through his Kymaerica project. According to this review, Demetrios is also using PowerPoint to expound about this evolving site-specific narrative.

Get Out of Jail Free

Of course, the big news today was the Grant of Executive Clemency from the White House that gave amnesty to the Vice President's former Chief of Staff on obstruction of justice charges related to the exposing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Behind the scenes, of course, the Libby Legal Defense Trust at scooterlibbey.com has been busy lining up endorsements from prominent Republicans. It is important to note that such sites are not only built for the wealthy and powerful and that many defendants use the Web to mount their cases and plea for leniency in a new form of extra-juridical forensic rhetoric.

Post-commutation, the home page for the site has been redesigned to emphasize a simple expression of gratitude for the President's decision. Yet earlier today the website showed Libby shaking hands with Afghan president Hamid Karzai , as though Libby were still an active member of the Executive Branch, participating in international policy no less. As a resident grammarian, I couldn't help but notice a split infinitive ("Scooter continues to aggressively appeal his conviction") and an awkward comparative ("the Executive Committee of the Libby Legal Defense trust is supporting him stronger than ever") in their few lines of prose.

Update: As Sivacracy pal Ann Bartow points out, my UCI colleague Scott Eric Kaufman has a nice post about possible Libby talking points at Acephalous. Kaufman has also been expanding his multimedia empire into the realm of podcasting of late.

Gluegle

Average citizens often think of Google as a search engine rather than also consider it as a data aggregator in which a number of the company's enterprises collect extremely personal information about those who use its e-mail, blogging, video file-sharing, e-commerce, and search applications. This point has been made by conspiracy videos such as "Google's Master Plan," which is known to appear alongside 9-11 conspiracy videos and the new ironically titled "Trusted Computing" video on YouTube. But those who are paranoid are not necessarily wrong when it comes to corporate monopolies with proprietary software.

Five months ago I was pointing out possible privacy concerns about Amazon.com's Yellow Pages and BlockView, which are now receiving widespread media attention in connection with Google Street View. Who knows how many people have installed the new Flash player only to see "10 Bizarre Sights in Google Street View"? As Ann Bartow points out, sales of curtains and bathrobes should certainly benefit.

Last week, London-based Privacy International posted its Open Letter to Google on the Web. Not only did Google receive low marks on their organization's "A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies," but afterwards the Director of Privacy Internationl alleges that "Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft." Although Microsoft received a better ranking than Google in this particular case, Privacy International points out that it has also been a vigorous critic of Microsoft and that it has no financial ties to the Redmond-based company.

(As someone signed into a gmail dashboard as I write this entry, I'm keenly aware of how these multiple functions are integrated as I write and how the anonymity of bloggers who use the Blogger interface is compromised. By the way, as a stickler for sentence-level correctness, I think there is an important distinction to be made between "anonymous" blogging and "pseudonymous" blogging that isn't often being observed in the recent debate about pseudonymous academic blogging. See "The Ethics of Anonymity in the Academic Blogosphere" by Leslie Masden Brooks, "Serious Bloggers" in Inside Higher Education, and -- for a light-hearted meme -- The Pseudonymous Meme for more.)

And Now, a Short Word, from Digital Rhetoric

I came across Mark Marino's work in connection with my own research on military-funded videogames and virtual reality simulations. He's also doing interesting work on digital rhetoric, including my current favorite, 22 Short Films about Grammar, which includes machinima work about figures like "Fragmented Frances" and "Dangling Zombifiers," so that you will know "To Go Boldly." His online venture Bunk Magazine also features "PowerPoint Valentines" for the month of February. Perhaps he could send one to PowerPoint foe Edward Tufte.

Since I'm not "Blogging for Dollars," on which The Los Angeles Times reported today, consider it a public service announcement.

Essay Assistance from Ivy League Graduate

Those who just tuned in to today's live chat at the White House website might have missed the following exchange, which headed off the probing questions that the Deputy Chief of the Baghdad U.S. Embassy faced:

Amy, from River Falls, WI writes:

I am a Political Science student at the University of Wisconsin River Falls. I am working on a semester long research paper about Iraq. My question is: How are the rules for constitutional ratification in Iraq currently written? Please answer my question, I have been combing the Internet for days and cannot find my answer

David Satterfield

Iraq's constitution was ratified on the basis of Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law, a basic law that was drafted by Iraqi leaders in concert with the Coalition Provisional Authority. That law stipulated, in Article 61, that Iraqis would vote on their constitution in an October 15 referendum. The constitution would pass if approved by a majority of voters and if not rejected by two-thirds of the voters in three or more of Iraq's 18 governorates. On referendum day the constitution passed dramatically. Seventy-nine percent of Iraqi voters approved the constitution and 21 percent voted against it. Only two governorates voted against it by a two-thirds majority. And so, in accordance with the Transitional Administrative Law and the rulings of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, the constitution was adopted.

Thank heaven that young people won't be "combing the Internet" for days with the staffers of this President around! Wisconsin students won't need to go to EssayExperts.com, as long as our Chief Executive is leader of the Free World.